Zia would give anything to be a typical teenager... again. Heck, she’d settle for being a vampire or smelly werewolf, but a member of the walking dead? The lowliest of all the monsters? No way! Nothing is worse than being a skin-sloughing, limb-losing, maggot-housing, brain-craving undead girl. Nothing.
It wouldn’t be so bad if humans didn’t insist on “Living Impaireds” wearing bands to keep their insatiable appetites in check. And if LIs want to coexist with humans, then rules must be followed, no matter how ludicrous they might seem. Why do undead teenagers have to go to high school anyway?
Zia does her best to blend in and go unnoticed, but when a new group of LIs are bused in from another school and she finds herself part of a growing horde, all bets are off.
Besides, rules are meant to be broken—especially when an unbeating heart is pulled in two different directions.
It’s weird to have a finger in my pocket. No one else knows it’s there, and only Lewis notices it’s missing from my hand.
"Umm... you had five fingers on that hand this morning, didn’t you?" He takes a big bite from his lamb sandwich—his usual. It’s chilly outside, but not too bad, and so we sit together on a bench under the school marquee.
"Yeah." I reach in my pocket and pull it out to show him.
Lewis is a good friend. He doesn’t even back away. "That’s nasty." He takes another bite of his sandwich.
"I know." I shove the wrinkled digit back in my pocket. "Eli says he can help me fix it."
He tips his head and raises an eyebrow. "Eli? As in Eli Olsen?"
I nod before I sip at my thermos. Gooey chunks of meaty flesh and blood slide down my throat.
"I thought he was expelled for punching Marcus in the face last week." Marcus is a vamp—a mean one, at that. He’s a least six-foot-five and weighs over two hundred pounds. I can’t imagine Eli punching him in the face. He’s not tall enough, for one thing, and it would have surly gotten him killed for another. Since Eli is still alive, it seems like something is wrong with the story.
"I have no idea. He’s here, that’s all I know."
"So how the heck is he going to fix your finger?"
"Not sure. He told me to meet him in Mr. T’s room after school."
"The wood shop class?" Lewis cringes. "There’s a lot of stuff in there that could be used to kill you. Are you sure that’s a good idea?"
I shrug and take another sip from my thermos. It always tastes better at 98.7 degrees. I settle for room temperature. "If I show up at home without a finger, my dad will start crying again. He already feels bad enough for doing this to me. If I can’t get it fixed somehow, he’ll just end up feeling even worse."
"What about the school nurse?" He pops some strips of uncooked bacon in his mouth.
"How would she fix it? With a band-aid? Besides, we both know she would never help someone like me. She’s too afraid." I slurp what’s left at the bottom of my thermos. It’s never enough and I’m still hungry.
"You’re probably right. Well, I guess it can’t hurt to see what Eli can do. Worst case scenario, he ends up killing you."
"Gee, thanks."
Lewis pats me on the back before he stands and makes a jump shot, landing his sandwich wrapper in the garbage can thirty feet away. Too bad they won’t let him on the basketball team. Our one-win-in-five-games team could use his help. Humans are stupid sometimes.
He starts to walk away but turns to look at me once more. "If you don’t make it out alive, I sure am going to miss you." He smiles, and his dimples make their appearance on his handsome face.
Too bad he’s a werewolf.
Moreover, too bad I’m a zombie.
I hear voices. Tiny fictional people sit on my shoulders and whisper their stories in my ear. Instead of medicating myself, I decided to pick up a pen, write down everything those voices tell me, and turn it into a book. I’m not crazy. I’m an author.
For the most part, I write contemporary Young Adult novels. However, through a writing exercise that spiraled out of control, I found myself writing about zombies terrorizing the Wild Wild West—and loving it. My zombies don’t sparkle, and they definitely don’t cuddle. At least, I wouldn’t suggest it.
I live on the benches of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains with two lovely children, one teenager, and a very patient husband. I graduated from Utah State University with a B.A. degree in English, not because of my love for the written word, but because it was the only major that didn’t require math. I can’t spell, and grammar is my arch nemesis. But they gave me the degree, and there are no take backs.
As a child, I never sucked on a pacifier; I chewed on a pencil. I’ve been writing that long. It has only been the past few years that I’ve pursued it professionally, forged relationships with other like-minded individuals, and determined to make a career out of it.
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